Diversified by design

David Snodgrass, president of Dennis’ 7 Dees, brings his design/build skills to a chain of garden centers in Portland, Ore. All photos: Mark Gamba Photographs            How Planscaper works Dennis’ 7 Dees’ Planscaper program targets DIY homeowners – the people who want a big installation, but want to do the heavy lifting themselves – and turns these leads into a revenue stream that a strict design/build division might ignore. The company has a professional designer on staff at each of its five garden centers, and creates plans for homeowners who want “the power of a professional plan” without hiring a contractor to do all the work. The fee? Clients can particiipate for as little as $500. The design fee goes toward plant costs. They bring photographs of their home and meet in-store with the designer – no home visits required – who puts their ideas on paper. The program has its own manager, who oversees the designers, and all garden center staff members are trained on how to talk to customers about the program. The company’s revenue goal for Planscaper is $300,000 this year. “The most important thing customers can have is the plan. It doesn’t matter if you’re going to do the work yourself or have it done for you,” Snodgrass says. “The plan is the means to the end that ensures every step of the way you’re going to have a great product. It’s totally invaluable.” Download samples of Dennis' 7 Dees' Planscaper marketing materials by clicking here.

After a four-year hiatus, David Snodgrass along with his partners, brothers Dean and Drew, decided it was time to get back into retail.

To diversify the company, Snodgrass, president of Dennis’ 7 Dees Landscaping & Garden Centers in Portland, Ore., went back to the foundation his grandparents built more than 80 years ago and bought back a group of garden centers his brother Dennis had sold off. And by adding a hybrid DIY design service for homeowners, they’ve been able to leverage those storefronts into a lead-generating machine for their landscape division.

Getting Back in the Game
Snodgrass, who’s president-elect of the Professional Landcare Network (PLANET), and his siblings moved back into garden centers due to their love of plants and their history. Their maternal grandparents started the business in the 1920s – Bernard Esch running a lawn maintenance operation and his wife, Florence, growing rhododendrons in Portland. Then their father, Robert Snodgrass took over the business and expanded into retail in the 1950s, naming the new company after his 7 children, Daryle Lynn, Dennis, Drake, Dan, David, Drew and Dean.

“I, and I think my brothers share this, love every aspect of the green industry. One more piece of that industry is a good thing,” Snodgrass says.  
 
And the company’s five garden centers are a boost for business. Besides better discounts for bulk purchases from suppliers and savings on administrative overhead, they act as a great source of leads – and sales – for its landscaping division.

Keeping Customers 
Homeowners will order a big installation, and the company’s landscaping division can handle it, but those clients aren’t ordering a new project every other month – maybe every few years, if the economy’s good to them, or if they buy a new house. During the in-between times, Snodgrass’ retail arm can maintain contact with them – flats of annuals for the front beds or tomato plants for their vegetable garden – instead of losing them to another garden center.

“We lost them, I guess, and allowed them to go to competing garden centers, and sometimes those competing garden centers offer landscaping services,” Snodgrass says. “This way, we’re able to service our customer regardless of where they are in their buying cycle. We’re able to keep their attention and keep them as an ongoing customer throughout that process.”
 
And the sales process works in the opposite direction, too. The landscaping division has a presence at each of the five garden centers, and all the sales associates are trained to guide customers to the right level of project – from DIY to do-it-for-me.

“A lot of times we can turn that customer into either a bigger landscape plant sale and still have them do the work themselves, or give them a proposal do to the work. It’s been a real good source of leads,” Snodgrass says.

Economic Advantage
And, the garden center purchases helped stabilize the 200-plus employee company’s balance sheet: 24 percent of its $18.5 million in revenue last year came from residential design/build; 28 percent from commercial bid/build; 18 from landscape maintenance and 29 percent from retail.

“It bucks the economy trend,” Snodgrass says of his retail division’s performance this year – up when other areas are stable or down. “That goes back to the diversification – the green industry is never hitting on all cylinders in all areas. Sometimes there are pockets of strength and pockets of weakness. Being diversified allows us to leverage the pockets of strength into the pockets of weakness.”

Snodgrass stresses that, for now, retail is a pocket of strength. At least for this year. Last year, not so much. For example, Snodgrass’ five garden centers pulled in $35,000 total during a recent spring weekend. That same weekend last year, they made $113,000 – more than triple this year’s revenue.

“You just have to suck it up, and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. This year, sales for the garden centers are up 60 percent (overall). We had an early spring, maybe there’s some pent-up demand showing. There’s a huge interest in vegetable gardening. There are just a lot of things that bode well for being in the garden center business this year.”

Profits From Planscaping
One of those things is Snodgrass’ Planscaper program. About a year and a half after getting back into the retail arena, Snodgrass introduced the hybrid DIY offering. Homeowners interested in installing plants themselves, but who want a professional plan to work from, can sit down with one of Snodgrass’ designers and get a professional design, provided they purchase enough plant material from Dennis’ 7 Dees garden centers. 

The idea is that the company can include things like creating outdoor living spaces, complimenting structures, privacy screening and overall curb appeal – important aspects of landscape design that homeowners rarely think about.

“We’re trained landscape design/build contractors. That’s our grounding,” he says. “We have brought that skill and talent into the retail garden center arena, so we have a level of professional design that’s you won’t find with a garden center that expands into landscaping or one that offers some type of DIY landscape design service.” 
 
“People don’t know what it is – they can walk into a garden center and they say, ‘Man this is really a great place. They don’t pinpoint that the rows are perfectly straight, or that merchandise is stacked from low to high. They don’t understand what went in to giving them that feeling. It all adds up to a wow. It just works. You don’t need to know the details about it.” 
 

The author is managing editor of Lawn & Landscape.

Want to get into garden centers?

Nearly a third of Dennis’ 7 Dees’ $18.5 million in revenue comes from its five garden centers. Here, president David Snodgrass shares his tips for landscape companies entering the retail sector. – as told to Chuck Bowen

A garden center is a whole different animal. You need specialists who know retail garden centers as managers. There’s an education in retail plant quality versus a landscape. The customer is going to pick up every single plant and look at it 360 degrees before they buy it. You can’t just think of it as more of the same.

If you don’t have some proven manager who knows the retail side of things, and you’re trying to open a garden center with your skill set and mindset of a landscaper, you’re in for a rude awakening.

It’s a big, huge challenge to get people to your doorstep. That’s all we want to do – we want to bring customers to our doorstep. Once they’re there, the rest of the program and what they see is going to keep them there and bring them back.

In the spring on good-weather Saturdays, every garden center is busy. If the weather is bad, it just adds up to a great season or a poor season. If you have a wet spring, it’s going to make it impossible to have a great season.

I would not buy a company that was not already successful. To think you’re going to turn it around is a pipe dream.

The trend is for multiple locations in order to average down your costs.  It takes a lot of marketing to get customers to come to your door. If you have to cover that with sales from one location, that’s difficult to do. The trend is roll ups, and there is still a place for mom-and-pop independents, but that’s really hands on.

You have to love plants to be in retail. If you really are an enthusiast about the industry, and have passion and energy, it can be a lot of fun for the right person. For the wrong person, it can be just the opposite.

It’s really seasonal; you’ve got to weather the cold. You’ve got to make sure you can keep your staff around – that creates a good foundation to build on.

If you could open your doors for four months and close them, you’d be highly profitable. Spring and fall are profitable. Summer and winter can be long. Those are tough months. You’ve still got to pay the bills.